"But it's so fast!" exclaimed the investor. "You can't tell me this thing runs on electricity?"Bill danced his new car gracefully up through the gears. The wind roared in his ears, but there was no other noise. The engine, of course, was completely silent."It's not electric," he said, smiling smugly. "It's much better than that."They overtook a police car. Bill didn't care. No other vehicle had a hope of catching them."What then?" gasped the investor. "Not...not nuclear?"But Bill shook his head. Nuclear energy was a thing of the past. Or rather, with his new technology it soon would be."It runs," he said softly, "on immoral thoughts."The investor laughed, but when Bill didn't join in, he looked thoughtful."I thought you were an environmentalist," complained the investor."I am," said Bill. "But expelling a bad thought into the ether is much better than expelling noxious fumes. Or radioactive waste."The investor nodded. This sounded plausible.That afternoon, Bill signed the contracts, and his new invention went into production.Soon the roads were full of Bill's new cars. Sleek, silent vehicles zipping along clean roads. The air was pristine again. The ground and sea were no longer torn open in an increasingly savage quest for oil."Burglary," thought the drivers, as they slid along silent roads. "Theft and battery and fraud." A few bad thoughts seemed a reasonable price to pay.But it wasn't long before the cars started slowing down."What's going on?" demanded the investor. "This is terrible! People will be wanting their money back!""Oh, it's just the narrowing of the potential difference," explained Bill, unlocking his car and waving in his bodyguard, before starting the engine with a brief image of an old lady being savaged by stoat. Things were much more dangerous nowadays. That was the problem with putting bad ideas into the air. The bad ideas were having the tendency to leech out into bad behaviours. Still, it was much more environmentally responsible than filling the air with carbon. Wasn't it?"All people have to do is up their game," explained Bill, skilfully manoeuvring the car through a district of burning public buildings. "Just...just think big, you know?"And that evening, after the investor ran the desperate ad campaign explaining how people could get their cars working again, everyone understood.The cars whizzed once more. They were faster than ever."Rape," thought the drivers, urging their machines on to ever greater speeds. "Rape and slaughter and death."But before long, the machines began to slow once more. This time, however, there was nothing more to be done."You are all just being prudish!" protested Bill, as the rioting crowd hauled him out of his sleek, beautiful car and marched him up the hill towards where the fires roared, huge and deadly. "It's just thoughts, after all! What's the harm of a few bad thoughts? Look at the amazing engine I gave you!"But the engine no longer ran, for the gradient had been equalised - the air was full of bad thoughts now, so thick and nasty you couldn't turn your head without knocking into one. "This is wrong!" screamed Bill. "Burning people is wrong!"But as they hurled Bill into the fires, there wasn't even one person left who knew if that was true.

The End

This story was inspired by thoughts of impending environmental catastrophe and wishful thinking. The image is by Olseya Hupalo, check out her work and follow her on Instagram and Twitter @thecupofarts.